RODERICK WALSH: 'Seeing the president was a normal occurrence'

I was appointed to the Barnstable Police Department in May of 1962 as a special police officer. I was assigned to the Kennedy Compound on a day watch and had the unique opportunity to see, and converse with, members of the Kennedy family to include the president, Attorney General Robert Kenne...

I was appointed to the Barnstable Police Department in May of 1962 as a special police officer. I was assigned to the Kennedy Compound on a day watch and had the unique opportunity to see, and converse with, members of the Kennedy family to include the president, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Sen. Kennedy and respective families.

I was appointed to a permanent position on the Barnstable Police Department in November of 1962. The Kennedy Compound was a routine location to check throughout the day and night and seeing the president was a normal occurrence. He was always appreciative of the services that the Barnstable Police Department provided him and his family and would express his feelings.

On the day President Kennedy was assassinated, I was recalled from off-duty and assigned to the Kennedy Compound main gate, from 1600 hours through the night into the next day. Barnstable Police personnel, Secret Service, Massachusetts state police and the military sealed off the area of the Compound both on the land and on the waterfront. Several radio networks and newspaper reporters interviewed me. Every telegram, flower arrangement and expression of sympathy went through my post and were picked by the Secret Service detail and held in the main house.

I have many fond memories of being part of that history but it was a sad and terrible time for our country. My late father, Maurice K. Walsh, was a professor at Boston College. A student came into his classroom and told him that he thought a radio report had said that I was wounded or killed. This was an anxious time for him and my mother.

I left the Barnstable Police Department and enlisted in the Massachusetts State Police in March 1964, leaving in April 1977 for a position in the Town of Bridgewater Fire Department and retired as chief in 2005.